Sabine Transportation Co., Port Arthur, TX
The Sabine Transportation Company, from its flag and stack design nicknamed the
"Diamond S," was founded in 1908 and has long been a substantial presence in the
tug and barge business on the Mississippi-Missouri river system and the coast of
the Gulf of Mexico. Since 1998 it has been a subsidiary of the Stickle Group of
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The company currently operates six ships, plus a number of
tugs and barges. The flag is a red burgee with a white S inside a white diamond.
Sources:
Stewart (1953),
US Navy's 1961 H.O.

Sampson & Tappan, Boston (mid-19th century)
Sampson and Tappan was originally a China trading firm that joined in the
thriving business carrying gold rush traffic to California in the 1850s.
It was also apparently one of the most active lines in bringing Chinese
immigrant laborers ("coolies") to both California and South America in the
1850s. Its most famous ships were the fast clippers Stag Hound (built 1850) and
Westward Ho (1852). The flag was divided horizontally, white over blue, with a
red disk on the center.
Source: paintings
of clippers Stag Hound in Greyhounds of the Sea and Westward Ho in "The Clipper
Ships")

Scott and Morrell, New York (mid 19th Century)
I have nothing on the company, except that from the names of the lines it
obviously specialized in coastwise shipping from New York to the American South,
probably dealing in cotton. The flags are very similar to those of the well
known
Grinnell and Minturn, and there may have been some kind of business ties
between the two companies. The New Orleans Line used a white and blue swallowtail divided
by a horizontal V paralleling the cut of the fly. The Savannah Line was the same in white and red.
Source: chart of "Private Signals of the Merchants of New York"

Seabulk International, Port Everglades, FL
Seabulk International specializes in three core business areas: support to
offshore oil facilities, tugs and towing on US Gulf coast (in which it is a
leading company with 30 tugs in operation), and specialty chemical and refined
product tankers (10 tankers in service). It was founded as Hvide Marine in 1958
and just recently changed its name. The flag is a dark blue burgee with a white
disk in the hoist bearing a blue S superimposed on a gold anchor and encircled
by a gold chain. Hvide Marine used the same flag, but with an H instead of an S.
Source:
www.seabulk.com

Sea-Land Services, Inc. (1956-1999) and CSX Lines (1999-present)
Founded in 1956 as a subsidiary of Waterman Steamship Company by Malcolm McLean,
a trucking magnate who pioneered the concept of containerized shipping.
McLean, with financial support from the billionaire shipowner Daniel K. Ludwig,
built Sea-Land into one of the largest merchant shipping companies under the
United States flag, but never made it profitable. He sold it--virtually
bankrupt--to the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in 1969. Then, with RJR about to
shut it down, CSX Corporation (the intermodal parent company of the Chesapeake
and Ohio Railroad) stepped in to rescue Sea-Land in 1986. Sea-Land's
international services were bought by A. P. Møller's Maersk Line in 1999 to
form Maersk Sea-Land under the Maersk flag (making Maersk in part a US-flag
company). Sea-Land's US domestic services were retained by CSX under the name
CSX Lines, which kept the Sea-Land flag, a stylized S-L logo in black and red on
a white field.
Source:
Styring (1971)

Seatrain Lines, New York (1928-1981)
Seatrain was established to specialize in carrying loaded railroad cars in the
U.S. Atlantic coastwise trade and between the US and Cuba. It was a considerable
success and soon expanded into other geographic regions and other areas of
shipping such as tankers. The loss of the Cuba trade after the Cuban Revolution
hurt the company, as did competition from the railroads. As a result, Seatrain
decided to focus on the tanker trade and was one of the most innovative
companies in the business, fitting the supertanker Manhattan as an icebreaker
and using it to open the Northwest Passage to ship Alaska oil directly to the US
east coast. Although technically successful, the venture was not profitable, so
Seatrain instead decided to focus on containerships. It pioneered the "landbridge"
concept across the United States, cutting 10 days off travel time from Europe
to the Far East, and was in position to become a dominant force in the industry
despite a heavy debt burden. However, its owners decided to get into the
shipbuilding business, which sucked off more resources, then to diversify into
oil and coal production, and eventually drove it into bankruptcy. The
company was finally liquidated in 1982. I have found two flags for this company:
Source:
US Navy's 1961 H.O.: White with a red rail-line running from upper
hoist to lower fly.
Source:
Styring (1971): White with two curved blue arrows forming a
letter S.

Arthur Sewall & Company, Bath, ME (1854-?)
The Sewalls were a prominent shipping family in Bath from at least the 1820s,
when Arthur Sewall's father William established a building yard. The firm
of E. & A. Sewall was formed in 1854, took over the other family ventures in
1875, and changed its name to Arthur Sewall & Co in 1879. The company was one of
the last to operate square-rigged steel-hulled sailing ships, well into the 20th
century, specializing in traffic out of New York around Cape Horn. It continued
to build as well as operate ships and apparently built the last square
rigger produced on the U.S. east coast. The flag was simply blue with a
white S.
Source: Lloyds 1912

Shenango Furnace Co. (1906-1969)
The Shenango Furnace Company was an iron and steel foundry in Pittsburgh which
established a small fleet of ore carriers on the Great Lakes in 1906. It sold
the last of its ships to Pickands Mather
Steamship Co. in 1969. The flag was a white
swallowtail bordered in blue with the diamond-shaped company logo in red and
white on the center.
Source: www.steamship.net

Siffkin & Ironsides, New York (mid 19th century)
Nothing on the company. The flag was interesting, six horizontal stripes of red
and blue, with a white canton bearing a black A. No idea what the A stood for.
Source: chart of "Private Signals of the Merchants of New York"

Benjamin W. Silsbee, Salem, Mass. (1790s-1893)
This firm, later known as Silsbee, Stone and Pickman, was one of the longer
lived sailing ship owners based in Salem, Massachusetts, the first home of the
U.S. China trade. The house flag was white with a large blue triangle with its
apex at the center of the hoist and its base at the fly.
Source: 1848
painting of Sooloo at www.pem.org/archive/

Sinclair Refining Co., New York (1916-present)
Harry Sinclair got his start selling drilling support equipment in the oil
fields of Oklahoma in the first years of the 20th century. He soon got into the
business of managing small, single-lease companies in return for small ownership
percentages. By 1916 he had raised enough capital to buy and combine eleven
small companies into the Sinclair Oil and Refining Company, which grew rapidly
into the seventh largest oil company in the United States and the largest to be
created after the breakup of Standard Oil. Within its first year, Sinclair Oil
expanded its production operations to the Texas Gulf Coast (and soon thereafter
to Mexico) and had built a crude pipeline to a new refinery at East Chicago,
Indiana, on Lake Michigan. These ventures necessitated the development of a
shipping fleet to carry Sinclair products to market both at sea and on the Great
Lakes. By 1917, Sinclair had 17 tankers in operation in the Gulf of Mexico
alone, and by 1923 was running ships to and from New Orleans, Houston,
Philadelphia, New York, Mexico, Cuba, and Europe. Sinclair survives today as an
independent oil company headquartered in Salt Lake City, with three refineries
and a marketing presence primarily in the U.S. west and midwest; I don't know
whether it still has its own tanker fleet. I have found two flags for this
company:
Source:
Stewart (1953),
US Navy's 1961 H.O. - Green with a white S.
Source:
Stewart & Styring (1963) - White with the corporate logo, a green
outlined irregular pentagon surrounding the name of the company in red above a
green brontosaurus. The brontosaurus, named "Dino," was adopted as a trademark
in 1930 in allusion to the geological origins of the company's products. The
version inside the pentagon was registered as a trademark in 1959. Many Sinclair
gasoline stations have large green concrete dinosaurs on the premises, which,
given their immediate appeal to younger auto passengers, has been an enormously
successful device for attracting business on the highways. I know I used to like
to climb on them.

Snow & Bacon, New York (mid 19th century)
I don't have anything on this firm. The flag was a very boring white burgee with
the initials SB in black.
Source: chart of "Private Signals of the Merchants of New York"

South Atlantic Steamship Line, Savannah, Georgia
This company seems to have operated scheduled trans-Atlantic and coastwise
services out of the southern part of the United States from the late 1920s until
at least the early 1950s, and was well enough established to belong to the
organizations representing the leading lines. The two flags used were both
rather attractive and of somewhat unusual design for a U.S. company:
Source: Wedge (1951) - A yellow swallowtail with a dark blue horizontal
stripe bordered in white.
Source:
Stewart (1953) - A white pennant bordered with blue and yellow,
the blue on the outside edge of the pennant.

Southern Steamship Co.
Not much on this company. The flag was white with a black lozenge bearing a
white S. The one shown for "Southern States Line" in
National Geographic (1934) has a similar
design with shallow swallowtail and no "S" and I assume the companies were the
same or related.
Source: Wedge (1951)

Spofford & Tileston, New York (by 1845-at least 1874)
Spofford & Tileston were in business by at least 1845 running a steam packet
service from New York to Charleston. In 1852 they began operating a packet
service to Liverpool as well, and obviously, judging from the label on this flag
in Manning, also served the West Indies. The flag was yellow with a blue
cross, the letters S and T in white on the horizontal arm. The image here shows
the letters spread out as in PSMNY; Manning shows them together at the center.
Sources: chart of "Private
Signals of the Merchants of New York";
Manning (1874) as Spofford's West India Line)

Sprague Steamship Co (C. H. Sprague and Son), Boston
All I have on this company is that it was the managing agent for government-owned ships under the title of the American Republics Line, running from the
U.S. to South America in the 1930s. It was a sufficiently well-established
firm to be a member of the American Ship Owners Association, the grouping
of large liner companies on the Atlantic coast, during the same period. The flag
was a red burgee with a large blue triangle, its base on the hoist and its apex
at the fork, a white S on the center of the triangle.
Sources:
Stewart (1953),
US Navy's 1961 H.O.